Chapter 17

Princess Nuala had finished doing what she considered right. She had destroyed the last crown piece of Bethmoora before her brother's eyes.

"I've been betrayed by my own blood. The wound will never heal," the Prince said with a shaky voice at the verge of breaking.

For all his power, dexterity and millenary wisdom, he who was sitting at her left side was a broken man, or rather, a broken elf. He continued in the same position. Forearms on his thighs, hands intertwined, gaze focused ahead. Loreto could barely distinguish his profile in between the curtain of his long straight bleached hairs. He was in shock.

"I killed my father in vain. I'm unworthy to be his heir. The crown shall forever remain incomplete. Bethmoora will remain without a king and under the ground for eternity."

What could Loreto say to cheer him up? She decided to remain silent. She wished to comfort him somehow, yet any idea that crossed her mind involved a form of physical contact she was unsure the Prince would approve of. She didn't know how elves dealt with this kind of pain. She didn't know whether he just wanted to be heard or expected something else from her.

"I don't remember the glossy green of tree leaves under the sun rays nor its warm caress on my skin," he whispered, choked and, still lost in thought, he lowered his gaze towards the rug. "The day's sparkle on fresh snow, the transparent water of a brook, the early morning low tide of Bethmoora's coasts and the high one later in the evening. The horses riding free on prairies, the birds singing, lost in the top forest branches. I don't remember the colors of a rainbow," he uttered and his voice broke.

The Prince closed his eyes. Tears rolled down his pale cheeks and hung from his strong jawline and landed on his boots. Loreto swallowed hard through the sudden knot in her throat. She ventured her hand towards his direction. Carefully she tangled her fingers in between his hairs and removed them behind his ear. The Prince turned his head to face her. Only then she noticed the discreet pointy tip of his ear and the circular scars on his temple. They didn't look like scars. These and the one crossing his face from one cheekbone to the other surely were birthmarks. She caught a tear with her thumb and caressed his cheek with her knuckles barely levitating above his skin. It was rough and porous. He looked into her eyes with his amber ones, which were flooded with tears.

I'm exhausted. I don't want to fight any more.

His voice in her mind was no longer a reason to panic. Loreto placed her left hand near his right one. She caressed it and took it in hers. It was big and calloused. The Prince stared astonished at how Loreto interlaced her fingers with his and caressed its back with her thumb. She took it to her mouth and gave a silent kiss. Nuada watched her open-mouthed.

"You can stay here tonight if you like," Loreto whispered and took his big hand in both hers against her cheek.

The Prince alternated his stunned gaze between his hand trapped in hers and her face as if exerting himself to understand. He noticed the large front windows. The outer metallic shutters were up and the profile of New York's small hours was visible on the horizon from the other side of the East River.

"The sun will shine bright at dawn," he thought out loud with his gaze fixed on the exterior.

Loreto stood up and searched the shutters' remote control. She pressed the button and lowered them completely. The living room was rendered in darkness. She switched the standing lamp on and adjusted its light to reach a brightness similar to that of a candle.

"German design. As soon as I saw them in Germany, I wanted to have them installed here. Not a single sun ray filters through the day, I promise you."

The Prince gave a hint to something remotely similar to an asymmetrical grin.

"Are you hungry? Thirsty? We can call for vegan food for you," Loreto offered with her best amiable voice.

The Prince tilted his head and frowned.

"There are lots of raw and cooked vegan food restaurants in New York," Loreto said and quickly she went to her bedroom for her notebook and landline phone.

As she came back to the couch, Nuada remained just as puzzled. His complete cluelessness about the modern human world both moved and amused her. Loreto did a quick search for such a restaurant and ordered two of their most complete menus.

"Forty minutes," she informed him and sat down on the couch by his right.

The Prince stood up suddenly.

"I must go back. I don't want to impose," he said with a dry voice and reached for his sword on the floor.

"What's that so urgent you have to do? Didn't you have me in your home?" Loreto said and stood up before him. She had to look towards the roof to face him. She went on top of the couch and turned him by the shoulders. She achieved to make him grin as he finally saw her face to face at his same height. "Let me spoil you. We eat something, we listen to some music, we talk, we drink some wine. You'll feel a little better. It's what we humans do when we want to make company to a friend who's sad."

The Prince smiled. His eyes shone for the first time since she met him. An expansive warmth manifested from within Loreto's chest and ran from head to toes. She yearned to leap into his arms and hug him tight with all her strength. However, she didn't wish to overwhelm him. She took his hands in hers.

"You told me I was your friend for having helped you escape the agency. Well, when a friend of mine suffers, I'm here to lend an ear, to open the doors of my home and give them all my time and attention."

Nuada questioned her with his eyes as if still having difficulties trusting or believing in her. He uttered a shy smile and removed his sword belt. Loreto went down from the couch and poured two glasses of wine. The Prince accepted reluctantly. She didn't know whether he drank alcohol, let alone human alcoholic drinks. This one in particular came from a small organic vineyard in Italy. Loreto had brought a few bottles from her last concert in the country at the south of Europe. When she saw the Prince suspiciously smell the content, she wanted to clarify it was in fact a strictly vegan and biological wine, but it wasn't necessary.

"I know, I heard you," he said amused and pointed to Loreto's forehead with his index.

They chuckled and toasted. She observed him, intrigued by his reaction. The Prince drank a small sip with his gaze lost on the floor. He chewed the flavor like a professional sommelier and drank another sip.

"Not bad," was his verdict.

Loreto sat back against the couch's back support and wall and hugged her legs. The Prince sat with crossed legs as if meditating. His back was always straight and his chin held up high. He was looking again like the Prince she had met, exuding pride and dignity.

"How do you know my music?" Loreto asked suddenly. "Agent Sherman said you liked my music but I don't remember having seen any radio, TV or computer at your place."

"It's unnecessary. Nothing beats the live sound of a theater," he said and drank from his glass.

A wine drop clung to the corner of his dark mouth. Loreto resisted the urge to dry it with her thumb.

"So you really attended my residence's first concert. Did you use some spell to intermingle with the audience like you just did to arrive here?"

"I was in the attic."

Loreto opened her eyes in surprise.

"And you didn't get caught?," she asked intrigued and sat with crossed legs like him facing him.

The Prince shook his head.

"Nobody ever goes up there. Attics are like sewers. They're always abandoned and reduced to dumpsters. There are loads of disused devices, dust, darkness and spiders."

Loreto shrunk back, disgusted. Nuada laughed, amused.

"I bet spiders recognize you as you go. You are their Prince after all. The Prince of nature and of all animals. Don't they bow before you balanced on their back legs with the six front ones praising you?"

The Prince burst out laughing and shook his head.

"I don't understand why humans fear insects, eat some animals and keep others at home like family members. All creatures are equal. Insects have their own reason to be. Spiders eat flies, toads eat them too."

"No one likes flies. They have too many eyes. I don't trust flies."

Nuada laughed again and shook his head with closed eyes. His laugh was deep, exquisite. Loreto observed him. For a moment she forgot that the being sitting by her side wasn't human. On a basic universal level, all beings, regardless of origin, nature or age, wished to live in peace. Communication was possible if attempted. His sister had done the right thing, but in the process she had broken his heart.

"Which other human musicians do you like?," Loreto asked and drank a sip from her glass.

Nuada raised his brows and lost his gaze on the roof.

"There are so many I don't remember them all," he drank a sip of wine. "At the end of the 16th century I used to love to climb in the attic of the Oude Kerk of Amsterdam and listen to Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's choirs. I've never been able to forget them. The capacity of creating perfectly harmonious sounds with human voices fascinated me and it still does. At the beginning of the 18th century I spent a season in Leipzig only to listen to the organ concerts of Johann Sebastian Bach. He played in different cathedrals of the city. A very hardworking man. He moved from place to place with diligence. He was always carrying a leather binder under his arm. The end of the 18th century in Vienna was interesting with the premieres of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operas. One after the other. In order to attend, I had to use the spell to alter my look. Theater attics in that time weren't as abandoned as they are today. In contrary, they were used as the center of mechanical operations for the stage."

Loreto remained open-mouthed.

"You attended the premieres of Mozart's operas?!," she let out fascinated.

The Prince observed her, amused. He neared his hand and gestured as if trying to catch something right before her astonished gaze.

"There are stars in your eyes," he said smiling, keeping eye contact.

She could not control the blushing. The Prince pretended to release the stars in the air with a blow and looked at her smiling.

"Yes," he replied and drank from his glass. "Your voice reminds me of Ella Fitzgerald's. Her singing filled the room and beyond. Her voice resembled this glass of wine," he contemplated it in his hand, "blood red and filled with bittersweet in the mouth. Her heart was pure like yours."

"Did you meet her?!," Loreto blurted out and almost leaped onto the Prince.

He smiled, amused at her enthusiasm.

"She performed in the Grand Theater in the decade of 1940."

Loreto jumped from the couch and went to her tall CD shelf. She produced the compilation Ella For Lovers of 2003 and played it. She returned to the couch with Nuada. She saw him close his eyes and lean his head back, lost in the music. Loreto smiled. For the first time, he seemed relaxed, at ease. Carefully, she made herself comfortable against the backrest and imitated him. The voice of Mrs. Ella flooded her ears like thick syrup along romantic piano chords. Loreto clinked her wineglass with his. It took him out of his musical trance. He uttered a half grin.

"Why do you like human music? I thought you despised us all equally," Loreto said tentatively of her words.

"Music is light. I've spent half my life trying to return to the light. It lightens the heart, it heals soul wounds, it transcends beyond understanding, it enchants," he drank the last sip of his glass. "Nuala is wrong, I know what she thinks and feels about myself-imposed exile period. I always wished to return to Bethmoora, but it was impossible for me to accept the humiliation of living underground being the prince of the Sons of the Earth. I hated my father for too long, poisoning my heart with the mere memory of him. If I've survived all this time without losing my mental sanity, it is because of music and those like you who dedicate their lives to give their gift to the world."

An overwhelmingly humbling sensation enwrapped Loreto. Compared with the giants of music of all time, she was only a spoiled and privileged girl. Everything she wrote and composed was for herself. Some songs were personal stories while others, loose thoughts in a crude attempt at poetry to match the chords enough to turn them into a song. To express solely through an instrument or orchestra and to manage to say the essential with the minimum, that was the real goal. Too many words and rhymes tangled the message, harmonic progressions capable of making Chopin shrug in disgust.

"Don't do that to yourself," the Prince blurted and cupped her face in both his hands.

For a split of a second, she forgot how to breathe. She couldn't help but stare at the half-open dark mouth of his thin lips. The wine tannins were beginning to loosen her up. The velvet voice of Fitzgerald sounding from the stereo in the background helped to intoxicate her even more. The Prince moved away from her and leaned against the couch's backrest.

"Your voice is a gift, Loreto," the Prince said with his head supported against the wall and his eyes closed. "When the pain in my chest had no longer a single crack through which to escape, in the moments where total darkness weighed tons on my shoulders, when I desperately searched for a reason to stay alive, music stretched its hand into the pit to lift me. And from the beginning of the new century it has been you who has intoxicated me with your voice," the Prince said. He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on his wineglass. "The brief moments listening to you live from some theater's attic have filled my heart with peace and light. In a solitary and immortal existence in the shadows, I've learned to appreciate them like a scarce oasis in the vast desert. Your voice has been my only friend and your music my only solace in my times of grief. The world closes their eyes and breathes in peace when they hear you sing, and so do I."

She blushed once again, and this time the Prince noticed. Loreto lowered her gaze, entrapped in a sudden shroud of inhibition uncommon for her. She looked him in the eye and tried to search for the truth in his words. He reciprocated, blinked once and focused on his glass. He drank the rest of his glass and fixed his gaze in front as if avoiding eye contact. It was the most beautiful and moving thing anyone had ever said about her music. Loreto never imagined meaning so much for someone on the face of the Earth.

She observed Nuada at such a short distance sitting on the couch. There was nobody else remotely similar to him. Not in his features, nor in his nature, life or origin. He was unique. The last prince of his kind. She felt the imperative need to protect him, aid him, snuggle him on her chest, keep him from the cold, save him from the dark, to accompany him. It wasn't the first time her heart experienced such emotion, yet all the other times she had entertained it, had been in vain and for people who never deserved all the noble and kind feelings Loreto had for them. Love wears out, or rather the heart grows tired of disappointments to only receive pain in return.

Nevertheless, it now beat strongly and hopefully with fresh energy, like a teenager with no life experience. It was absurd. She wasn't a little girl anymore, Loreto was a grown up woman and the mistress of her own life. It was absurd to even consider such feelings for a being like Prince Nuada. A being sworn to his people and with a heavy quandary in his hands as there has been but a few in Mankind's history. If there was anything she had learned in the past weeks is that life is too short. Any day could be the last. Why do we question so harshly what we feel with all sorts of criteria learned at an age when cynicism has already gained terrain in our hearts? Loreto drank the rest of her wine. She then left the glass on the floor and searched for Nuada's hand on the couch. He lowered his gaze from the horizon and stared at her gesture. He squeezed it in his. If he read her mind perhaps he already knew what Loreto was feeling. If she was an open book for him, there was no need to ruin her heartbeat with any explanation attempts where language is too short to express its dimension and weight. Nuada wrapped his fingers in hers and embraced it. They looked into each other's eyes. The abyss of his dilated iris framed by his golden pupils shone in the living room, lighted by the dim standing lamp. He blinked slowly and breathed out like an exhausted sigh. Her chest overflowed her throat and eyes with overwhelming feeling. Why? It made no sense. It was already too late to search for an explanation. Too late to turn back.